Can & Can'tankerous

by Harlan Ellison

  R IS FOR RAVEN

  I’m sick to death of it, let me tell you! Just fed up! Photosynthesize. Grandiloquent. Tumultuous. Matriculation. Portcullis. Cytoplasmic. Euphonium. Oleomargarine. Nascent. Extemporaneous. Schottische. Captious. Heterogeneous. Marginalia. Oxymoron. Xylophone. Sephardic. Perambulation.

  Sick to death, I tell you.

  Disgusting stereotypes, that’s all it is!

  Nevermore, my ass.

  S IS FOR SERAPHIM

  Good hit, lousy field. Traded down to the Pony League.

  T IS FOR TAHAMTAN

  PRESS RELEASE. Dateline: Hollywood. 17 April.

  Paramount Pictures today announced the resumption of production on the multi-million-dollar theatrical feature Tahamtan, Warrior of Persia, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

  Based on the life of the legendary mythical hero who lived 2000 years ago, the film has been plagued by union strikes, unexplained accidents on the set, and the untimely death of the original scenarist, Rostam Shayegani, who passed away while only halfway through the screenplay.

  Prior to Paramount’s commitment to filming the great myth of pre-Iranian Persia, the last person to write about Tahamtan died of grief. Ferdoci was commissioned by King Darush, the Persian ruler, to write a book of the myths and legends surrounding Tahamtan, in order to preserve old Pharsi. He was promised a gold coin for each verse. Over a period of thirty years Ferdoci wrote between fifty and sixty thousand verses.

  Darush, direct lineal ancestor of the current head of production at Paramount Studios, contested the bookkeeping and royalty arrangement originally entered into with Ferdoci, and paid him in silver, rather than gold. Ferdoci, according to informed sources, was so upset, that he flung the money back at the Prince, and went off to die of a broken heart, leaving behind a curse upon all Persia.

  Since then, Iran has been invaded by the Moslems, and Pharsi has been debased. Ferdoci’s book was the last one written in the true language until Paramount’s signing this week of a new scenarist guaranteed, by studio executives, to deliver a shootable script.

  Paramount Pictures today proudly announce resumption of the film Tahamtan, Warrior of Persia, starring Schwarzenegger, Sharon Stone, Danny DeVito, Sean Young, and Zalman King as Rakhsh; directed by Alan Smithee; screenplay by Salman Rushdie.

  U IS FOR UNSEELIE

  The Seelie Court, the general Scottish name for the good fairies, can be considered, at best, cranky and best left alone by humans. Far worse are the fairies of the Unseelie Court. Their hatred of humans is monumental. They comprise the sluagh, the band of the unsanctified dead who hover above the earth, snatching up to themselves the undefended mortals they then use to rain down elf-shot against men and cattle.

  And you thought it was Martians disemboweling your cows. Boy, how superstitious can you get!

  V IS FOR VIGINAE

  Minuscule in size, they are demon imps who make their homes at the root of human nose hairs.

  No other demons will associate with them.

  Chadwick makes a Groomette nose hair cutter recommended in all the best grimoires.

  Best to rid oneself of the snotty little bastards.

  W IS FOR WYVERN

  “Would you prefer the couch, or just hanging there in mid-air?” The psychiatrist, Dr. Eugene Bucovitz, MD, PhD, FAPA, Mbr AMA-APA & SCPS, Diplomate American Board of Psychiatry & Neurology, Inc., stared up at the three-headed dragon hovering less than a foot beneath the ceiling of his office in Westwood. “If you have no preference, might I suggest the couch…your, uh, breath seems to be singeing the inlaid tropical wood ceiling.”

  The wyvern’s middle head glared down at the doctor.

  “Meaning no offense,” the doctor said hastily.

  The wyvern settled slowly to the floor, ambled to the couch, and lay down. Its three heads, on the three ropey strands of muscled neck, remained nearly vertical, though the bulbous body, with its two eagle-like legs and its barbed tail, hung over the sides of the leather chaise. “We have problems,” the left head said.

  “Of course you do,” said Dr. Bucovitz, “and I’m here to help you…or rather, to help you help yourself. That’s why Dr. Hildreth referred you to me.”

  “We heard good things about you,” the right head said.

  “You did wonders with Ghidrah, we understand,” said the middle head.

  Bucovitz smiled, then sighed. “Yes, one of my successes. But don’t ask about Mothra. I still lament my failure there.”

  “No one’s perfect,” said the left head.

  “Except Godzilla,” said the right.

  “Do you always have to add your two cents?” the left head said, with a snap of ice-crusher jaws. “Just because you had her.”

  “Now stop fighting, you two,” said the middle head with a tone of mixed exasperation and mollification.

  “Up yours, peacemaker!” said the left,

  “Bite it, big boy!” said the right.

  “You see what I have to put up with, Doctor?” said the middle, his eyebrows arching helplessly. “We have problems.”

  “Uh, excuse me,” said Dr. Bucovitz, “did I understand you correctly? Did you say Godzilla was ‘she’?”

  “Big mouth!” the right head said to the left head. “Now the lizard’s really out of the closet!”

  “Oh, sure, I’m the gay one here, right?”

  “No, you’re the homophobe!”

  “Flex in here, you shit, I’d like to bite off your eyelids!”

  “Yo’ mama!”

  “Now, now, now!” Bucovitz said, waving his hands. “You really can’t go on like this!” His words went unheard, however. The three heads were snapping at each other, twining and untwining, undulating and striking. “Stop it!” the psychiatrist shouted. “Stop it at once, you’re the worst patient I’ve had in here since that little kiss-up E.T.” He paused, then added, “Or Streisand.”

  But there was no hearing him. The three heads of the wyvern lashed at one another, knocking holes in the wall, tearing gobbets of leather from the chaise, clacking and snapping and deafening everyone in the waiting room.

  Bucovitz was thrown from his chair by the left head as it performed a loop-the-loop in an attempt at burying its fangs in the carotid of the right head. The psychiatrist crawled to the intercom and slapped open the switch with a bloody hand.

  “Ms. Crossen, quickly! I need a second opinion here. Get me Dr. Cerberus immediately!”

  Great gouts of flame and thick, oily smoke now filled the office. In the murk Bucovitz could hear the wyvern trying to bite off its own heads. He tried to crawl to the door leading to the safety of the reception room, but the dragon had smashed so much furniture that the exit was blocked. Bucovitz lay in a corner, his head covered by his arms, silently wishing he had gone into electrical engineering.

  Suddenly, there was silence.

  Bucovitz crawled across the office. He reached the French doors that opened onto the balcony overlooking his townhouse’s central garden court. Fumbling through the thick, roiling smoke, he found the latch and lifted it. He threw the doors open and crawled out onto the balcony. Smoke poured out of the room.

  As the smoke thinned, he lay on the balcony looking back into the office. Shambles. The definition of the word shambles. “Wait’ll you get my bill!” he shouted. But from the thinning veil of smoke there was no answer.

  “You’d better have damned good Blue Cross!”

  Still no answer.

  “You do have coverage, don’t you?”

  Silence.

  “Answer me! Dammit, answer me!”

  Now the smoke was clearing, and the wyvern could be seen lying in a spavined, sprawled, sanguine heap, each head smiling contentedly. The middle head looked up and winked at Dr. Bucovitz. “Didn’t you wonder why Dr. Hildreth, who hates your guts since you stole his wife and practice, and almost got him disbarred, referred us to you?”

  “No…you can’t mean…”

  “Doctor,” said all three heads in unison
, “we have problems. And so do you.”

  What is the sound of one psychiatrist weeping?

  X IS FOR XOLAS

  From the Alacalufs, the indigenous natives of Tierra del Fuego, we learn of the supreme being Xolas, who infuses the newborn child with soul upon its birth, who reabsorbs that soul when death takes the vessel.

  Last week Xolas had a garage sale.

  Your mother bought two floor lamps with tassel-fringed shades, a lava lamp, and the slightly soiled soul of Joseph Stalin.

  Guess what you’re getting for your birthday?

  Y IS FOR YOG-SOTHOTH

  More terrible than even those who “created” him could know. They did not dream him into fiction. He dreamed them into life. There was no being named Howard Phillips Lovecraft, no man named Clark Ashton Smith. Bits of cosmic debris inhaled by the Great Old One, they were blown back out in the shapes that would create the dream of the god on this side of the rift. But its name is not Yog-Sothoth. When the dream-men Lovecraft and Smith absorbed the directions for creation, to build the being that would be worshipped first by readers, then by cultists, then by all…the message was garbled by the veil, warped as it came through the rift. Its name is not Yog-Sothoth. When the anagram is unraveled, and the true name is written, the veil will split, the rift will open, the darkness will come.

  At M.I.T., right now, a hacker with too much time on his hands, grown bored with computer bulletin boards, role-playing games, and cheap paperback novels, is running a decoding program.

  How many variations can you make from the name Yog-Sothoth? The hacker is only fifteen minutes ahead of you. Closing your windows will not keep the darkness from seeping in.

  Z IS FOR ZEUS

  Chief deity of the Greek pantheon, called the father by both gods and men, he was an abused child, having been snatched from the jaws of death by his mother, Rhea, when his father, Cronus, decided to eat his children.

  Like father, like son.

  Don’t invite Zeus to dinner.

  Talk about disgusting table manners.

  AFTERWORD

  There’s a third one I’ve been planning to do: “From A to Z in the Lemon-Lime Alphabet.” It’ll be lost islands and sunken continents—Atlantis, Mu, Lemuria, all of those—and the notes for it are sitting on my desk. I’ve had a little health setback, so things are a liiiiiiiiittle harder these days, but eventually, I may get around to the third story…or maybe the fourth: “From A to Z in the Licorice Alphabet?”

  Sunday I stayed in bed.

  Didn’t feel badly, got up, did some chores,

  wrote some letters, the usual shit.

  The Energizer Bunny just kept

  right

  on

  going…

  INTRODUCTORY NOTE:

  WEARINESS

  “Weariness” is the most recent example of “Ellison under glass.” I was the literary guest at Foolscap VII in September 2005 in Bellevue, WA. I was to lead a writers’ workshop of one hour in length. We gathered around a big conference table and paintings—for which reproduction rights were available—were downloaded from the internet and printed; there were about forty of them.

  I picked one, and each of the students took one. I told them I wanted a story by the end of the hour. I sat down and wrote “Weariness” on my portable Olympia typewriter, clacking with two fingers, 120 words per minute sans typos as I’d been doing for something like 50 years at that point…as they labored around the big table with their electronic doodads.

  It was my state of mind at the time. I was not well. I did not like being at the convention.

  WEARINESS

  Very near the final thaw of the Universe, the last of them left behind, the last three of the most perfect beings who had ever existed, stood waiting for the transitional moment. The neap tide of all time. The eternal helix sang its silent song in stone; and the glow of What Was to Come had bruised itself to a ripe plumness.

  The ostren fanned itself. Melancholia had shortened it, one entire set of faculties could do nothing but sigh. And it had grown uncommonly warm for her, in sight of the end.

  The velv could not contain his trepidation, peering out around the perplexing curvature of space.

  But the tismess, that being who had summoned the helix, knew boldness was required, here and now at the final moments. And it stood boldly forth, waiting for the inevitable. All three—there were no others—were at the terminus of uncountable multiple trillions of eons, and weary.

  Heaviness hung, a dire swaddling.

  “What is there to fear?” the tismess said, rather more nastily than it had intended. Reify, it had thought, urgently.

  Heaviness hung, undiminished.

  “What is there to fear?” Again, trying to flense the tone of nastiness, chagrined at its incivility.

  The velv whimpered and stared at the great helix, receptors clouding as the brightness fattened. The point of alarm had been reached and abandoned long since. “I am the last,” it said.

  “As is each of us,” thought the ostren. “We are, each of us, you and you each, we are, each of us, the end of the line. Out of time, all time, the last. But why are you frightened?”

  “Because…it is the end. The question at last answered. There will be no more. No more I, no more you, no more of any living species. Does that not terrify you?”

  “Yes,” thought the ostren. “Yes. Yes, it does.”

  The tismess was silent.

  And the great helix solidified, its colors steadied, and the last three stared as only they were able, looking into the future, for the past and present were now gone, looking to see what would overwhelm them as they were vaporized, gone like their kind, gone forever, not even motes, not even memories. And they saw, the three last, absolutely perfect, beings; they saw what was to come.

  “Oh, how good,” whispered the velv, her tissues roiling most golden. “How wonderful. And I’m not afraid…not now.”

  The ostren made the sound that very little children had once made when they had truly learned where the puppy farm is. But there was no fear, either, in the ostren.

  For the tismess, as it was all coming to an end, suddenly there was what there was to be seen.

  What was on the other side.

  Before him, immediately before him, was the darkness. Heavy, breathing yet silent; it seemed to go on forever. But that was the other side. And beyond that darkness was something: something he could call the “other side.” Could he see it, could he even imagine it, there had to be another side beyond this side. He reveled in the moment of knowledge that all there had ever been would go on, would start anew perhaps, would roll on through the final night, no matter how long. There was an “other side.”

  But, of course, in truth, what he was seeing was only another aspect of the only darkness; and not even darkness; nothing.

  What he was seeing was every thought he had ever had, every song he had ever sung, everyone he had ever known, every moment of his trillion aeons never knowing he had nowhere else to go, all and everything of memory; where he had stood, what he had done and what had been done around him, what there was and what there could ever have been.

  In that instant, he saw backward into memory, backward into the night that had preceded the first thought.

  Faraway, a galaxy became as dust, and vanished, leaving no print, no recollection, no residue. Then, one by one, in correct stately procession, the solitary stars went blind.

  The question was answered: Sat ci sat bene.

  “A painting is a sum of destructions.”

  Pablo Picasso (1882–1973)

  AFTERWORD

  Running the unacceptable risk of writing an “afterword” oh-by-the-way “note” a thousand times longer than the story itself, I sit down to explicate the “Bradbury connection” to this, perhaps my last-published story. Like Ray, I am now old, and there is an infinitude more to recollect and savor of links between Bradbury and Ellison. Truly, it should suffice for even the most marrow-sucking
obsessive fan that Ray and I have known each other close on forever.

  Ray contends that in very short order he and I will be sitting down together cutting-up-touches with Dickens and Dorothy Parker, shuckin’n’jivin’ with Aesop and Melville.

  Uh…well, okay, Ray, if you say so.

  (I am rather less comfortable with that Hereafter stuff than is Ray. As has averred Nat Hentoff, I come from, and remain as one with, a grand and glorious tradition of stiff-necked Jewish Atheists. Ray and I have a long-standing wager on this one; which of us is on the money, and which is betting on a lame pony. Sadly, the winner will never collect.)

  La dee dah. Back where we began. Too many words, yet I’ll attempt that undanceable rigadoon.

  These days of the electronic babble, every doofus with some hand-held device calls every other male he knows—“brother.”

  “Hey, Bro! Whassup, Bro? Howzit’ goin’, Bro?”

  Strangers: brother. Casual acquaintances: brother. Same skin color supermarket bagger: brother. Other skin-colored guy who tipped you when you parked his Beamer: brother. Much like the oafishly careless, empty, and repetitious whomping of the once-specific, cherished and singular word “awesome,” the sacred word BROTHER has become in inept mouths, a dull and wearisome trope.

  (Awesome is the word one uses for Eleanor Roosevelt, Mt. Kilimanjaro, and pitching a no-hit no-run ballgame. Not available for the crappy cheese quesadilla you had this afternoon, nor for anybody who Dances with the Stars. With or without a wooden leg.) Same goes for yo Bruth-thuh.